Happy Birthday, Republicans!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Er...I guess I will if he ever makes it onto Mount Rushmore.

His point was calling the Republican Party "liberal" before the Great Depression is stating that President Coolidge was a liberal.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Didn't know the Republicans are from the Whigs, as they seem incongruent. If they did swap sides it makes a bit more sense, and the use of the term liberal too.

I used to consider myself "liberal" until I learnt that the American political spectrum had a completely different meaning for the word.

Indeed... if you look at the history, you can see it makes some sense. The Republicans came from the Northern Whigs, who came from the remnants of the Federalist Party (the party of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton). It has always been a sort of pro-commerce party and aside from the Theodore Roosevelt & Howard Taft era, they've always been pro big business.

The Democratic-Republicans (later just the Democrats) were Thomas Jefferson's party and were for smaller government and free market policies (no help to business for one). The classical liberal, basically.

When Franklin Roosevelt ran for President in 1932, he actually attacked President Hoover for spending too much and putting the country into debt. This would be before he came up with his idea of the New Deal, of course, and wanted to prevent a Red Revolution. The liberals then became known as big government folk.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


His point was calling the Republican Party "liberal" before the Great Depression is stating that President Coolidge was a liberal.

Ah! I see that your crystal ball is working better than mine.
That insight took some first-class devining.

[SlowwHand]

That's what happens when you're the self-proclaimed smartest person in the universe.

[Dauphin]

KH.